"My father was a judge. That surprises you. He used to make my mother and me watch people being hanged. One day, he said there was too much bad in this world. He took a bullet, put it in his gun, and spun the chamber. Then he took it in turns, clicking it at each of us, until he blew the back of his head off with the final click. Understand this: There is nothing on this Earth that frightens me now. Nothing."

Portrayals of the game differ as to whether the cylinder is spun after each trigger pull. If it is, the game can continue indefinitely with a 1 in 6 chance of hitting the loaded chamber each time. If not, there are a maximum of 5 chances to not die, the odds increasing by one with every pull of the trigger, assuming the cylinder has 6 chambers and the ammunition round isn't a dud.

History:The game was allegedly invented by the Russians either during World War I or by those assigned to Siberia. If the latter, to deal with the extreme boredom, as their assignment was often referred to as 'counting trees', while the former was to try and get out of the extremely bloody and inglorious war. There are no indication however that this is true (and such outlandish behaviour would have most likely been recorded as suicides and duels were usually described in length) as the first mention of this game (as well as the name 'Russian roulette' itself) appears in a 1937 short story of the same title by Georges Sundez, a Frenchman. Also, the most common revolver issued by the Russian army at the time had a cylinder that could not be freely spun (and also had seven chambers, but that's not really important).

Today, it's seen as the one of the more manly stunts available because of the risks involved, reduced somewhat by the common one-round-six-chambers setup. Perfect for proving you're not afraid to (or want to) die, you're a real man, or you're just Too Dumb to Live.

Some claim that if the original game existed, it could be a largely harmless entertainment - if there is a single round and a gun is well oiled, the full chamber will end at the bottom.

It can also be used to scare information out of prisoners, as a form of psychological torture.

Need we say it: Don't Try This at Home. Besides the risk to your life if you lose, if you play with others you can be charged with murder if someone dies (at least in common-law jurisdictions, under the theory of depraved-heart/grossly reckless murder—see for instance the Pennsylvania case Commonwealth v. Malone), and in some jurisdictions you can be tried for attempted murder even if everyone lives. One notable case in 1984, was American actor Jon-Erik Hexum who died as a result of a Russian roulette stunt, despite only loading the revolver with blanks. Despite his belief that this made it harmless, the overpressure wave from the discharge of the blank propelled the round's wadding into his temple, shattering his skull and causing brain trauma. Six days later he was declared brain dead and was taken off life support.

Examples:

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Advertising

This trope is often invoked for the British chocolate Revels. Each packet has a mix of flavors, and you can't tell which one is which. An advert parodied The Deer Hunter by having a guy face off against a Vietnamese opponent Russian Roulette-style. He gets orange flavor, to the joy of his opponents, but it is revealed that he "likes orange" and smiles as his opponent screams in agony as he gets a coffee sweet.

Possibly inspired by the stand-up comic Jasper Carrott, who had a line in his routine about how the other kids at school made him play a very similar version of this game after they found out he was allergic to peanuts. (He was probably making it up. I hope.)

Parodied in one commercial about gambling etiquette. A large guy is sitting by a kitchen table, and he puts the gun against his head with 1 in 6 bullets, and wins. He's combined it with Strip Poker, as an attractive woman then takes off a piece of her clothing. He keeps making bigger gambles, eventually winning even with 5 in 6 bullets. The woman insinuates that she'll sleep with him if he keeps on gambling, and he puts in the last bullet and prepares to shoot as he says he's "feeling lucky". The screen cuts to black as the caption says that good poker players should know when to fold.

Anime and Manga

In Gunsmith Cats, Rally Vincent uses an extreme version to intimidate a captive: she sticks the gun in the poor schmuck's face and pulls the trigger not once, but five times - fast. She explains that she can time the spin so it stops just as the loaded chamber passes the hammer.

Her record is twelve straight spins. Wanna help her break it? KLIK-KLIK-KLIK-KLIK-KLIK!

"Russian Roulette" was the opening theme for the Dirty Pair TV series. Oddly appropriate that (Hero Insurance), you MIGHT get to keep your planet.

Ashley Ashura of Code Geass: Akito the Exiled is rather obsessed. He believes that luck is what makes him win battles, and he likes to test his luck. Then, after losing his close friend and subordinate, Johannes...

In the original Manga, we are shown that after his humiliating loss to Pegasus, "Bandit" Keith's life went straight down the toilet, and he fell to gambling to survive. One panel shows him playing Russian Roulette with an utterly insane look on his face. In addition to that, his flagship monster, Revolver Dragon, attacks by playing Russian roulette... pointed at the enemy monsters, of course. (With the monster, however, the gun's two chambers have five bullets apiece, and any shot he makes reloads every turn. His chance of missing is rather slim. The real version of the card is more balanced.

Earlier, at the very beginning of the "Death T" arc, Mokuba plays "Russian Roulette Buffet" with Yugi and Joey. A spinning table, and six plates of food, two of which have poison; to which only Mokuba has the antidote. It is, of course, rigged by Mokuba, and Joey gets poison on his first plate. Yugi beats Mokuba by attaching the Puzzle to the spinning table, causing Mokuba to break the syrup bottle which was the secret control for the table; and then the final spin gives Mokuba the poison. (Mokuba gave himself away; the fact that the syrup bottle was empty combined with the fact that he didn't seem worried at all about being poisoned made Yugi realize he was using that to control where it landed.)

Dartz has Twin Bow Centaur (not a real card), which would randomly fire an arrow at either your monster or your opponent's monster.

Kiryu has Infernity Reloader (called Infernity Randomizer in the dub), which fires 500 damage at either you or your opponent. His Infernity Death Gunman is a straight up Shout-Out to Dirty Harry.

Yusei has a cowboy-like monster called Quickdraw Synchron, which is a subversion. While the anime makes it look like the effect is having it play Russian Roulette with Yusei's other Tuners, its true effect is not random at all.

Joey has the Time Wizard, which had a "Time Roulette" effect. If it lands on one of the two time machine symbols, it ages everything on the field by 1000 years. note This can also be a test of luck, since the desired effect is to leave the opponent's monsters old and withered while Joey's Baby Dragon ages into the mighty Thousands Dragon, but some others also get a positive effect from 1000 years' time, such as Yugi's Dark Magician becoming the Dark Sage. If lands on one of the four skull symbols, it detonates Joey's side of the field, which can take a lot out of his Life Points.

Joey also had a Spell Card called Roulette Spider which he used against Espa Roba, and called "the riskiest move in Duel Monsters". By paying half his life points, the "spider" blindfolded the strongest monster on the field (in this case, Jinzo) and made it spin like a roulette wheel. When Roba called for it to stop, it would do so and make an attack against whoever or whatever it was aiming at, which could be either player, directly, or any other monster on the field. (Joey really lucked out here. It ended up aiming at Roba's Reflect Bounder, who had an effect that destroyed both monsters and wiped out Roba's remaining life points, winning Joey the duel.) The real version of this card applies one of 6 effects (dependent on a dice roll) to an opponent's attacking monster.

In the Black Cat manga vol. 1, Train dares Sven (who just recently got a free chest carving from Eve) to shoot him in the hand to see if he's still daring enough to go out in his condition. Sven picks the right bullet, but Train doesn't feel any pain, since he "tampered" with the bullet before loading it.

In an early chapter of Katekyō Hitman Reborn!, Reborn suggests Tsuna and Kyoko play Russian Roulette with a party bullet. He then switches it out with a Dying Will Bullet, and Kyoko gets hit.

An episode of the second Sakura Wars OAV has Maria, having gotten an enemy at her mercy, pretend to put one bullet in her gun while actually leaving it unloaded, spin the chambers, and essentially ask the guy if he's feeling lucky (he isn't). Not quite how the game is normally played, but close enough that one can practically hear the writers saying "It's like Russian Roulette! Because she's Russian, get it?"

Liar Game has a less-fatal variant with "24-Shot Russian Roulette", where the gun is loaded with six caps (out of 24) and if you shoot yourself, you lose several million yen. This being Liar Game, the heroes figure out how to fix it in their favour.

In one chapter of Dance in the Vampire Bund, Akira runs across some vampires playing Russian Roulette, although the losers generally heal from the injuries they suffer. When pressed into a game, Akira (taking a page from Rally above) spins the chambers, puts the barrel to his heart (a part that generally wouldn't grow back on a vampire) and pulls the trigger five times, then presents the pistol to his opponent.

In GUN×SWORD, the first villain uses this to show off his incredible luck, by playing with two pistols at once and surviving five pulls.

One of the Snake Princess's servants in Dragon Ball Z plays this for fun, as she shows Goku. She promptly loses.

Goku: Personally, if I was given a choice, I think I'd rather play checkers.

Akagi and Ichikawa play a single round of Russian roulette pre-match (as in, they only pulled the trigger once each) as a way of gouging each other's personalities. Ichikawa could hear which chamber the bullet was in by the noise made as it passed the barrel and predicted which chamber the bullet was in before the trigger was pulled. Since it was more than two triggers away, Akagi wasn't very worried either. As it turns out Ichikawa was completely correct and they both walk away with slightly greater respect for each other.

Black Lagoon. In "Roberta's Blood Trail", Rock is sent to deliver a message to a bar where two people are playing this game. By now he's Seen It All, so doesn't react when one of them blows his brains out in the middle of their conversation.

Kodaira-Sensei suggests this as an alternative to a life-size dice game in episode 3 of Anne Happy.

In Kakegurui, Jun tries to force Yumeko to strip in an alley and then threatens to rape her. The psychotic Midari shows up and pulls a gun on him, then says to make this interesting, there is only one bullet in the chamber. If the gun fires, he dies, if it doesn't, she'll submit to him as well. When Jun gets scared, she hands him the gun and dares him to pull the trigger on her. Instead, he hands it back and leaves.

In ''Gamble Fish, a combination of Poker and Russian Roulette plays a big role in a match between story's primary antagonist Abadini and a blatant Expy to a certain American President Ohama. Abadini even manages to survive a discharge of a fully loaded Revolver to the forehead, under some extremely specific circumstances.

In one comic, a Russian archduke on visit to the wild west challenges a gambler into a game of Russian roulette, and the gambler bails out when the gun is fired. Later, the duke challenges a Cavalry captain, and the gun goes off on him. The round is a blank, and he shouts "failed" in Russian, a running gag during the story, as a Russian assassin says the word every time his plans fail, but it isn't translated.

In another story, Luke is being held in jail and suggests to his jailer, a compulsive gambler, that they play Russian roulette to pass time (the only other guy who'd play with him having met his predictable end). The jailer plays first, gets lucky, then gives his gun to Luke, who, of course, points it at him and orders him to let him out.

Jailer: And here I thought it was impossible to cheat at this game!

Guy Smith, Mister Sensitive / The Orphan from X-Force played it alone on the regular (that is, every day) because of depression stemming from the fact that his parents never wanted him. Every day for three years, he kept getting lucky. Someone tried to kill him once by filling the other chambers, but because of his powers, he could feel the extra 5 bullets in the gun.

Batman once hunted a villain who was using a rigged gun. The villain would challenge rich men to Russian Roulette, after both men playing had made out a will leaving everything to the victor. The gun had an extra safety that wasn't visible when playing, so the villain could never lose. Batman won despite the gun being full. (This particular game of Russian Roulette involved adding a bullet to the gun each time the two men lived.)

Two-Face, in the storyline that reveals his revised origin in The New 52, plays this once every so often, the decision to do so spurred by his coin landing good side up. He kills himself this way at the end of the story.

There's an old MAD comic of a line of six people passing the gun to each other. When the man sixth in line gets it, he shoots the gun, and the bullet goes through the heads of all the others.

A suicidally depressed Twitch does this with a temporarily de-powered Spawn after his son is lost to vampires. Al decides he's had enough and throws Twitch off the building, but not before getting a bullet in the shoulder.

Nikolai Dante ends with a game between Nikolai and Vladimir. Vlad loses.

Judge Dredd: War Marshal Kazan decides to punish one of his subordinates who cost him victory in the Apocalypse War by forcing him to play a daily game of Russian Roulette until he dies.

Red Ears: One gag features a variation on this after the standard use. A European explorer challenges an African chief to play a game of Russian Roulette with him. The Chief agrees, but then dares the explorer to a local variant: the explorer must pick one out of a row of six native girls to give him a blowjob. When the explorer notes that this doesn't seem like much of a challenge, the Chief informs him that one of the girls is a cannibal.

The Doctor Who (Titan) comic introduces the game of Rassilon's Roulette, which is exactly the same, only played with a "time gun". Every time you pull the trigger you have one chance in six of not just being killed, but Ret Gone.

Comic Strips

A Pogo comic book-style story, probably created as supplementary material for a book collection, features the cast as Russian scientists working for the Soviet space program. In the opening scene they are playing Russian Roulette. Churchy gets the bullet, but survives because he "missed". (A case of Too Dumb to Die, perhaps?)

Films — Animation

In the animated Lucky Luke movie La Ballade des Dalton, a retired poker cheater who has become a preacher is on the Dalton's killing list. He insists on ending his life with a last game, which turns to be the Russian roulette, and shoots himself in the head. Of course, being a compulsive cheater, he loaded the gun with a blank.

Films — Live-Action

Our Miss Brooks: At the crisis point of The MovieGrand Finale, a depressed Miss Brooks jokingly suggests to Mrs. Davis that they play Russian Roulette when she returns home from school. Miss Brooks had jumped to the conclusion that Mr. Boynton had bought the house across the street preparatory to giving her a proposal of marriage. Instead, Mr. Boynton had bought the house so his lonely mother could live with him and wasn't proposing marriage. Fortunately, Mrs. Davis fixes matters behind scenes, inviting the elder Mrs. Boynton to be her new boarder. Mrs. Boynton gives her approval to Miss Brooks, leaving a happy Miss Brooks to rush to the zoo to meet Mr. Boynton. There, after eight years of radio, four years on television, and one theatrical grand finale (not to mention a comic book adaption thereof), Mr. Boynton proposes. Mr. Boynton and Mrs. Connie Boynton nee Brooks live Happily Ever After.

Arizona Dream: Axel has entered Grace's room with a gun, with the apparent intention to shoot her in the head. Not only does Grace dare him to go through with it and mock him for losing his nerve, but she turns it around on him by challenging him to a game, after setting up the bullet in the chamber. And not only does he go through with it, but they both survive and then end up kissing and rolling on the floor. Weirdest seduction ever.

The Deer Hunter has perhaps the most famous example. Scenes in other films featuring Russian Roulette being played by men wearing red headbands are parodies of this film, such as Meet the Feebles.

Alfred: Have you ever heard of Russian Roulette? Daphne De Carter: Why, certainly. I used to play it all the time with my father. Alfred: I doubt that you played Russian Roulette all the time with your father! Daphne De Carter: Oh, I most certainly did. You play it with two decks of cards, and... Alfred: That's Russian Bank. Russian Roulette's a very different amusement which I can only wish your father had played continuously before he had you!

The movie Intacto, which has a premise of luck as a real and transferable property, has two very lucky people playing a form of Russian Roulette. They play with one chamber empty.

The Spanish comedy film Airbag has a scene with a Russian omelette. Five people bringing 15 million pesetas each, five omelettes, four of them made with poison mushrooms, one of them with regular ones. The one left alive walks away with all the money, except the small percentage given to the organisers. (It was a scam, though. The organisers thought nobody would be as stupid as to actually follow with that setup.)

The climactic scene of the 1988 movie La Boca del Lobo (The Mouth of the Wolf). The protagonist challenges his army superior, who'd been sent to their remote Peruvian village after he killed a fellow officer in a game of Russian Roulette over a woman. In the end they're down to the last chamber, which they know contains the bullet — the man holding the gun has to either back down in disgrace or blow his brains out. He is unable to pull the trigger.

At the start of the Russian film Burnt by the Sun the protagonist (a secret policemen who's been ordered to arrest a general and his wife — a former Love Interest) does this with a seven-shot Nagant revolver. He survives, and so carries out his order, killing himself at the end of the movie via the more reliable method of slitting his wrists while in the bathtub.

Live! parodies Reality TV by having an American TV executive use this as part of the ultimate ratings winning game show where ordinary people literally gamble their lives for a huge cash prize.

In Sonatine, Murakawa plays a forced game with two reluctant Yakuza underlings. When it comes to Murakawa's turn on the final chamber, he just smiles and begins to pull the trigger. It turns out to be empty.

In The Way of the Gun, Abner plays a version of this as a way of possibly committing suicide. He's filled a pillowcase with revolvers and randomly selects one to use in the game, but he gets interrupted before firing.

13 Tzameti features an underground game in which desperate men are recruited to play a modified version of Russian Roulette while rich gangsters bet on who survives, like a horse race. The players arrange themselves in a circle and hold their revolvers up to the head of the man in front of them. When a light bulb turns on, they all fire.

The Professional. Mathilda does this to show Léon she's ready to become a killer and does this with a half-loaded revolver. Léon informs her that the chamber is loaded (he can hear the difference), then knocks her hand away at the last second, which is just as well because the revolver really goes off.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides has a variant; six pistols, four unloaded, two loaded and Jack is ordered to shoot his love interest with them. He argues with Blackbeard over whether the game is False Roulette. When he's convinced that it's real, he takes another other option and jumps off a nearby cliff.

Bollywood movie Dhoom 2 has a sexually charged one where Mr A (Hrithik Roshan) forces Sunheri (Aishwarya Rai) to play after finding out that she had betrayed him. Only it turned out to be False Roulette and ended in one hell of a kiss.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has Harry use the game to intimidate a perp into talking. Unfortunately, Harry rashly decides to chance it and pull the trigger to frighten the perp even more, trusting in probability that it will be an empty chamber. He kills the perp. Oops.

Malcolm X features Malcolm playing it with a couple of other hoodlums to determine who would be the leader of their group. In a later scene he admits to a friend that he palmed the bullet so the gun was unloaded.

Life of the Party has Michael tossing away five of the bullets and then pulling the trigger of the gun while it's pointed at his friends and himself. The sixth pull has the gun up against his head... and there's a click, and he reveals that he never loaded the sixth bullet.

An alternate ending to Die Hard with a Vengeance includes John McClane playing a variant of Russian roulette with Simon Gruber using a Chinese rocket launcher without the sights (so no way of telling which end is the muzzle). He asks Simon a series of questions (with them turning the launcher to face the other each time) and eventually asks a question that Simon gets wrong. Turns out that the answer to the question is that he forgot to bring a flak jacket, which is what McClane is wearing and this would have protected Simon from the blast of the rocket, and the rocket fires on Simon, killing him instantly.

The R in ABCs of Death 2 stands for Roulette, and we see three people partake in a game of it in a basement. When one of them realizes he's the loser, he shoots his wife instead, to spare her from an apparent worse fate.

The climax of the 90s film 187 featured this. In the film, Samuel L. Jackson is a substitute teacher at an Inner City School who gets into a dangerous feud with a gang leader. At their final confrontation the gang forces him to play a game of Russian Roulette, referencing the famous Deer Hunter scene. They're unnerved when Jackson begins taking multiple turns without flinching, even giving them a "The Reason You Suck" Speech as he does. At one point the gang leader begins cracking under the weight of the speech and hesitates to pick up the gun when it's his turn, so Jackson's character volunteers to take the gangster's turn... and promptly blows his head off. Since Jackson took his turn and the bullet that would have killed him, the gang leader decides he has to take one more turn now... and promptly blows his head off.

In the book The Citadel of Chaos, the player can at one point play Russian Roulette with daggers: the player stabs himself with a dagger picked at random from a set of six, with 5 being "trick daggers" whose blade retracts into the hilt and a real dagger. And the prize is an item that is virtually required to finish the book. According to the Universe Compendium, this game is known as Kharean Roulette or Knifey-Knifey.

City of Thieves features another version, with pills: five harmless, one poisonous. The reward is simply a respectable amount of gold.

Jokes

There's a joke about an explorer in Darkest Africa who explains the game to a local chieftain. The chieftain tells him they have a simiar game: you're presented with six beautiful women to spend the night with... and one's a cannibal.

Literature

Erast Fandorin plays different variations of it throughout the novels and always wins (obviously), because he is just Born Lucky. Notably, the game is referred to as "American Roulette" in the first novel, The Winter Queen. One prominent player even tells his opponent "I'm telling you, because of me and you they will rename it 'Russian Roulette'."

As noted in the Straight Dope article linked to above, the 19th century Russian novel A Hero of Our Time has a proto-example of this. A fatalistic Russian officer makes a bet to prove his philosophy, which he does by putting a single-shot pistol to his head and pulling the trigger, and it proceeds to click harmlessly. He then points it to the wall and again pulls the trigger, and this time, it fires.

Ed McBain's short story "The Last Spin" has two Gang Bangers playing Russian Roulette to the death as a minimum-casualty solution to avert a war. They realise they're Not So Different just before one loses.

There's a short story by Saki where a man plays Russian Roulette hundreds of times without shooting himself. The man then decides that this must be because he's special and takes up another high risk pastime: hunting vicious animals. He's fatally mauled, and the narrator reveals that his success in the game was due to the revolver being well-balanced and well-oiled.

As the title would suggest, the game appears twice in Russian Roulette, the Alex Rider book that acts as the life story of Yassen Gregorovich. Yassen plays the game twice in Vladimir Sharkovsky's office: once with one bullet, the second time with one empty chamber. Not really a spoiler - he survives both.

24: Jack Bauer was once captured by some criminals while breaking into a prison. The criminals made Jack and his accomplice, a drug lord Bauer was breaking out of jail play Russian Roulette at gunpoint. Jack successfully guesses which chamber contains the bullet, and shoots one of his captors rather than put the gun to his head.

Minutes before the Jack and Salazar example above, Jack is forced to play Russian Roulette with one of the prison guards. The guard, who gets the first shot, is crying and scared to pick up the gun until Jack convinces him to play along, at which point the guard picks up the gun, points it at his own head and pulls the trigger. He dies.

CSI: NY has Mac taylor, our hero, using Russian Roulette as an interrogation technique on a crook who kidnapped his girlfriend. He gets through three chambers before the guy talks. Turns out he had palmed the last bullet and the gun was empty.

In Heroes, Doyle uses his People Puppets power to force Claire, her birth mother Meredith, and her adoptive mother Sandra to play a variation of this, crossed with Spin the Bottle: he places the gun on the center of the table and spins it. The first time, it points at Claire, so she has to choose which mommy to fire at. She refuses to choose, so he makes her shoot at Meredith - and gets one of the empty chambers. The second time, he spins it twice - once to decide who will fire it, the second one to decide who it's fired at. This leads to Sandra pointing the gun at Claire, which is what really makes the scene unique: she takes this opportunity to try to fire it until she gets the bullet, which kills Claire, freeing her from Doyle's control and allowing her to take him out.

Wiseguy. Mad arms dealer Mel Profitt does this with undercover agent Vinnie Terranova when he finds out Vinnie is sleeping with his sister (whom Mel has his own incestuous relationship with). The gun turns out to be empty. Vinnie pulls out his own revolver which has an empty chamber under the hammer and challenges Mel to his own version, with only a one-in-six chance to live. Mel calls his bluff and Vinnie has to shoot the bullet into the wall.

Farscape episode "Taking The Stone" featured a tribe of thrillseeking kids that play Russian Roulette... with fungi! The mushroom in question grows in clusters of four: three of them get you high, one of them will kill you, and there's no real way to tell which one.

Leverage has Elliot flashbacking to being tied up playing this. He was the only one playing. Apparently it was still better than going to one of Sophie's plays.

Carnivŕle. When one of their own is murdered, the carnies tell the killer to pick a number between one and six. When he cautiously picks "3", three bullets are loaded into a revolver, with three pulls of the trigger. He survives, incredibly enough, and Samson orders the others to let him go despite their protests. Samson does kill him later though.

The X-Files. At the climax of "Pusher" a criminal with mind control powers forces Fox Mulder to join him in a game. Mulder is made to "shoot" the criminal, then himself, then is about to shoot Scully when she triggers the fire alarm, distracting the criminal so Mulder can turn the gun on him instead. It turns out that chamber was loaded.

Cowards, a rather dark BBC comedy show, featured a sketch that had a group of people playing this at a dinner party. The first five survive but the sixth claims that they have been playing it wrong and they should have spun the chambers before each trigger pull. He is argued down, with hilarious consequences...

Criminal Minds: in the episode 'Revelations', an unsub - well, one of the three personalities of an unsub suffering from Dissociative Identity Disorder - kidnaps FBI Special Agent Spencer Reid and tortures him, then adds to the torture with a game of Russian Roulette. Three times, Reid lucks out. The fourth time, as he's standing knee-deep in the grave he's just been forced to dig for himself, he gets the gun away from Hankel and shoots him, without checking to see if the bullet is chambered first. It is.

Castle: played with in the episode "Hedge Fund Homeboys", in which a group of drunk high schoolers liked pretending to play this, with a real revolver that didn't have any bullets loaded. Except one of them snuck a bullet into the right chamber, to kill another one and make it look like a tragic accident.

In the Tales from the Crypt episode "Cutting Cards," two gamblers loathe each other so much that they're willing to play a game of Russian Roulette just for the possibility of the other person dying. They both survive because the round turns out to be a dud.

NUMB3RS featured an episode involving a group of gamblers holding a live webcast that featured a tournament of Russian Roulette and people online can bet on who wins. Turns out that the game had been rigged.

When Benson and Stabler confront a murderer (who happens to be Russian) in the "Russian Love Poem" episode, he takes the five bullets from his revolver and points it at his chest, punctuating his Motive Rant with pulls of the trigger. He gets two clicks before:

Nothing hurts me, not even this gun! See how lucky I am? (BANG)

Michael Lewis, a rapist and murderer, takes Olivia Benson and a girl hostage. Threatening the girl, he forces Olivia to play the game with him.

Luther forces a Villainous Breakdown from a former special forces soldier who is killing police officers, but then has an Oh, Crap! moment when the man empties all but one bullet from his snubnose revolver and starts putting it to their heads and pulling the trigger. Eventually the killer is down to the last chamber and it's his turn — Luther decks him when he puts the gun to his head to commit suicide.

Alien Nation. In episode 10, a Russian Roulette-style game with salt water once played on the slave ship resurfaces and plagues the Newcomer society, forcing George to confront his past.

The City Hunter: Jin-pyo uses this as an interrogation method, pulling the trigger each time the subject gives an answer that annoys him (and using up five turns before he gets a real answer).

Banzai featured variations of this in a couple of gambles that feature the "Wheel of Misfortune" (ie. Beer Cans, Umbrellas, 5 hard boiled eggs with one real egg, and Hair Mousse).

Airwolf. Played by Dr Moffet, who steals Airwolf in the premiere and flies it to Libya. At one point he does this as exposition to show Airwolf's Achilles' Heel — a bullet in the mid-air refueling tube will destroy Airwolf; Moffet pulls the trigger but the chamber is empty (moments later when he pulls the trigger again while Remonstrating with a Gun, it goes off). When confronted by Airwolf flown by Stringfellow Hawke at the end of the episode, Moffet calmly aims at the tube and pulls the trigger. Again the chamber is empty and Stringfellow responds by showing that There Is No Kill Like Overkill.

On The Riches, Wayne/Doug loads one round in a revolver, spins the cylinder, and pulls the trigger on Hugh Panetta, freaking out the man in the process. Doug then reveals he'd actually palmed the bullet to illustrate his point that it's the mark's perception of reality, rather than reality itself, that is necessary for the sell.

Person of Interest. In "All In" a casino boss captures Team Machine and the POI of the week, a Card Sharp whom he forces to carry out this trope pointing the revolver at John Reese, Leon Tao and Harold Finch in turn before Reese is able to break free. The casino boss points the revolver at Reese and clicks off every chamber to no effect, as the Card Sharp palmed the bullet.

In an episode of Friday the 13th: The Series the killer of the week was using the cursed item to win playing Russian Roulette in high-stakes illegal gambling (it created a snake that slowly traveled up the sacrificial victim until killing them), eventually targeting a loved one for his last bout. Unfortunately for him they stop the snake just as he's getting ready to confidently pull the trigger on a revolver now fully loaded (each round they added another bullet) providing some karmic justice.

In That Mitchell and Webb Look, two men are shown playing Russian Roulette when the board rotates in "Wordwang." A gunshot sounds just as they disappear from view.

Music

The Gazette's second album "NIL" has an opening track called "The End," in which the five members can be heard passing a gun around while muttering in English and Japanese. The barrel is spun and a click is heard for each member, and at the end of the song the guitar feedback is cut short with the sound of a shot.

The Kaizers Orchestra song "Bak Et Halleluja" is the singer confessing to a priest about a game of Russian Roulette he played with a friend. The friend lost.

In addition, their song "Resistansen" mentions Russian Roulette.

"Russian Roulette", Rihanna's first single from "Rated R," is from the POV of someone playing for the first time. It even starts and ends with the sound effect of the barrel spinning.

"Wasn't hard for me to get him where I wanted him, confronted him * bzzzt, click* There is a bullet in one of 'em Feelin' lucky? *click* Looks like you are * click-click-click*...Luck ain't goin' too far What you did was put on another pair of shoes and they just happened to be too big What you did was stupid, real fuckin' stupidWell, shorty, I gave you a chance, and what'd you do? Threw it back in my fuckin' face, so fuck you too! *BANG*"

Jazz pianist David Kikoski has an instrumental called "Russian Roulette".

Accept's 1985 album was titled Russian Roulette. The cover photo showed the band dressed in Russian army uniforms sitting around a table with a pistol lying on it.

Two rounds of Russian Roulette are played between the Death Seekers in the music video (NSFW) for the Cyberpunkers track, Fuck the System. Notably, the "loser" of the second round (who was the "winner" of the first) has a shit-eating grin when he pulls the trigger that kills him.

Mitch Benn's song "I'm Still Here" is about a rock star who is trying to die a rock star death, but nothing seems to kill him. One of the things he does is "played Russian Roulette with a fully loaded gun".

Radio

"The Game," which first aired on Escape and then on Suspense, centers around two bored teenage boys who get drunk and decide to play this.

Played by Fredrik and Carl-Magnus in A Little Night Music. Fredrik ends up taking a bullet which merely grazes his head, which to Carl-Magnus is just not sporting.

Video Games

Revolver Ocelot plays Russian Roulette with three guns juggled simultaneously a few times in Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater. A variation with only two guns, and someone else (namely, Naked Snake) holding the second one, shows up in the final gameplay section before the ending. That time it turns out the loaded round is a blank.

Also, Ocelot's Russian Roulette shows up in The Last Days of FOXHOUND when the characters revisit his memories of the scene from the game. Later, he demonstrates the technique to Psycho Mantis, who is frustrated at not being able to figure out which chamber has the bullet — understandably so, because The Boss chose correctly during the events of MGS3.

The protagonist of Illusion of Gaia has to play a game similar to Russian Roulette with a set of wine glasses, one of which is poisoned, in order to get the necessary funds to buy desert transportation. Played with, since the protagonist has Psychic Powers, and the other player was suicidal.

The Flash game "Pico vs. Uberkids" on Newgrounds has Pico suggesting a game of "Rock Paper Scissors Roulette" to compete against the titular Uberkids, reasoning that if their opponents are superior in every way, then a contest of luck is the only way to level the playing field. As you might expect, it combines Rock-Paper-Scissors with Russian Roulette, with the loser of the Rock Paper Scissors match having to try their luck with the revolver. The chamber is not re-spun between turns, so the chance of getting the fatal bullet increases as the game goes on, and if five chambers come up empty during a given round, The Grim Reaper appears over the loser of the next Rock Paper Scissors match. If Pico loses a Rock Paper Scissors match, he pulls the trigger twice, because Pico is crazy.

killer7 has a climactic game of Russian Roulette between school principal Benjamin Keane and badass assassin Garcian Smith. It doubles as Garcian's Moment of Awesome, as well: the gun is passed back and forth between Keane and Garcian, Keane growing constantly more frantic and Garcian remaining calm as ever, until 5 chambers have come up empty; it's the 6th chamber, and Garcian's turn. As Keane starts laughing, Garcian calmly puts the gun to his head, and pulls the trigger... and nothing happens.

It has a rather weird beginning though. Keane promises if Garcian wins, Keane will tell him his secret to picking up any woman in the world. If he loses, Garcian has to kill the President. Think about that for a minute. Keep in mind, though, that in Killer7, dead people seem to have a habit of not staying dead. Also, Keane does say the secret. It's just that... well...

In Final Fantasy X-2, the revolver toting henchman of LeBlanc will instead play this with status effects, and it's always pointed at his enemy. The name of the attack is "Russian Roulette", but the attack is a spun barrel, then shot at one of the people he is facing, giving a random status effect.

The Flash game Orange Roulette is a parody of The Deer Hunter (in movies) involving men with oranges for heads playing against each other. You can choose to try to shoot the opponent on your turn, but if you fail to kill them, you have to take a shot - and you're one pull closer to the bullet. You can also spin the chamber again once a game.

Tales of Phantasia has Cless engage in a variation of this game. There are two cups, one of which has been poisoned at random. Each person picks a glass, and they drink it. One of them will die.

Only mentioned in The World Ends with You, but it's the first of at least four Reaper Sportsnote The other three mentioned, all played onscreen, are Hide-and-Seek, Player Hunt, and Tag., played by the undead staff running the Reaper's Game when simply earning points loses its shine.

In Space Quest V, someone suggests Roger Wilco should "go play Romulan Roulette with a hand phaser or something".

LISA: The Painful RPG makes this into a Mini-Game. Both players have their own gun, and take turns pulling the trigger until one of them finds their bullet first. Can be a good source of mags, and you get a decent party member if you survive long enough, but naturally it also means you're gambling with the lives of your party members. It's worth noting that party members killed during this minigame leave your party permanently.

Gods Will Be Watching has this used as an interrogation technique during the torture session. Irving holds a gun to Burden's head with one bullet in it, then starts asking questions. "For one in seven chances out of BOOM, what's the answer to my question?"

A rather bizarre variation of this crops up in The Secret World: Daimon Kiyota challenges his treacherous lieutenant to a game of Fugu roulette, with a plate of cooked pufferfish standing in for the revolver; some portions are properly cooked and safe to eat, others are highly toxic. If Daimon wins, he gets the traitor's phone and list of contacts; if the lieutenant wins, he becomes the new head of the Korinto-Kai - and Daimon will come back from the dead and take him out for ice cream. In the end, the lieutenant can't go through with it even after Daimon takes a headstart of three bites, and is left to slink away in shame - with a warning that the next traitorous act will result in the lieutenant's entire family being treated to a feast. Once the lieutenant leaves, Kiyota finishes the meal without any ill effects. False Roulette or Acquired Poison Immunity? You decide.

Mentioned early in Splinter Cell: Pandora Tomorrow, when Sam acquires an aerosol canister of what turns out to be a deadly virus and Lambert tells him they need to bring it to a specialist who can find out what's inside. Sam notes he could just open the canister there and see for himself, and Lambert chastises him by claiming he could also play Russian roulette with a semi-automatic pistol.

In Persona 5, a variant happens at the cultural festival, with a set of takoyaki that has one brightly colored red one that is extremely spicy. Goro ends up eating it in spite of Haru's attempts to warn him.

Visual Novels

In Super Dangan Ronpa 2, Komaeda ends up playing a game of Russian Roulette with himself in order to solve a puzzle. Thing is, he doesn't actually know how to play... so he only leaves one chamber empty out of six.He still wins, due to being SHSL Good Luck, and as a reward, gets a file full of confidential information about his classmates in addition to the standard reward (access to a secret room with weapons and a hidden passage) that the culprit in that chapter got by playing the game.

Zero Time Dilemma has this occur in the "Fire" fragment. Sigma is strapped into a chair, and Phi is trapped in an incinerator. Diana is forced to play with a gun to Sigma's head, but with three bullets. She can just choose to not shoot, but if she doesn't, the incinerator will turn on and Phi will die. If she takes the shot, Phi will be freed whether or not Sigma lives.

In the climax of part 4 of the Newgrounds video Mystic Island, the protagonist Sam is facing down Norm on a cliff, and threatens to shoot him with the gun that they set aside for "Russian Roulette" if their coconut supplies ran out. Unfortunately, the gun only has one bullet, forcing Sam to squeeze the trigger until the bullet reaches the chamber. When it does, Norm takes the gun away and fatally shoots him, but he gets better.

At least one recipient of a Darwin Award attempted to play Russian Roulette with an automatic pistol.

Ryan Haywood made a Russian Roulette room in Achievement City where a player gets locked in said room surrounded by dispensers and has to press a button. If a light in the room turns on, he is safe and gets released. If not, he is pelted to death with arrows and fire charges. The trick? Players have the option to press the button twice, as the room is the equivalent of a six-chamber revolver. You push the button twice, you could ensure that someone else will die... or die yourself.

Ballot Box Bunny ends with Bugs Bunny proposing a game of Russian roulette to Yosemite Sam after both of them lose a local election. Sam goes first, then Bugs, who puts the gun to his head as the picture irises out; a shot is then heard, after which the picture irises in again to reveal that Bugs missed and shot Sam. (Sam: "Ah hate that rabbit.") Perhaps unsurprisingly, this ending is rarely if ever included when the short is aired on TV. (In the USA at least, but it was shown in Israel at least as early as the 1990s.)

In Barbary Coast Bunny, Bugs is running Nasty Canasta's casino out of business by winning at everything. A fed up Canasta pulls a revolver and suggests this; only for Bugs to spin the barrel and somehow cause coins to spill from the gun.

Malory claims that she blacks out and does foolish things when drinking absinthe. We then see a flashback where she plays one-on-one Russian Roulette in a dive bar somewhere in Asia while swigging from a bottle. "All right, you yellow bastards! Let's dance!"

A flashback shows Sterling seated at a table with four dead bodies, the implication being he loaded it with four rounds and shot the others.

Archer: I can't believe they fell for that!

When Archer takes Woodhouse's brother, Dicky, to Las Vegas, one photo in the montage is of Dicky winning a game of Russian Roullette.

In The Oblongs, when Pickles became addicted to performing crazy stunts, Milo enticed her with a game of Russian Roulette with bullets in all the chambers in order to get her to an intervention.

Squidbillies: To earn some extra booze money, Early Cuyler plays solo Russian Roulette with a 6-shooter and has spectators bet against him. He presses his luck a little too far:

Early: All right! Who wants to bet I can't do it a sixth time in a row!

Real Life

According to Cecil Adams, the original version of Russian Roulette might have been completely made up by an American in 1937; the original version may also have been one empty chamber, rather than one bullet.

There's also the drinking game version of this, where the bartender sets six glasses on the bar — one has vodka, the rest are water. Which result constitutes "winning" depends entirely on your perspective. Another version has 6 shots of vodka, but one of them is hot chili flavoured.

At some bars, you can forgo the shots of water in favor of a toy gun that will "fire" at the loser by lighting up and making a snapping sound. What that person has to drink is up to the players.

The drinking game known as "The Beer Hunter". Start with a six-pack, with one can shaken. Take turns opening a can under your nose or by your head. If it doesn't blow up, chug. If it does, you have to chug the rest of the pack. The book this came out of rated this the highest possible on the "you will toss your cookies" scale. James May's Man Lab later utilized a variant of it to test the Monty Hall Problem.

The American version is called Crocodile Dentist, in which children take turns extracting teeth from a crocodile until they hit the one sore tooth that will cause the croc to get fed up and chomp on your fingers. Teaching children that life is cruel and arbitrary since 1993! (Unless you cheat and test which tooth gives the most resistance, of course.)

A game using this mechanism was released in 1975 as a marketing tie-in for a movie about fishing. Age 5 and up - seriously. The Crocodile Dentist version was way less creepy.

Mentalist Derren Brown (no, not Dan, Derren) famously played a game of Russian Roulette on live TV. Derren has since publicly confirmed that the gun was holding a blank round. He has also pointed out that by pressing the barrel right against his temple and firing point blank, he WAS still in danger of being extremely badly hurt or killed by the discharge — that was exactly how actor Jon-Erik Hexum died, for example.

There are many less deadly variations. The most know is the "spike" which is knowed for have failed many time (DON'T type "spike magic trick failed" in google!)note It is a variation on the old three shell game where the magician places a pea under one of three Shells, only instead of there being peas and Shells, there are styrofoam cups and metal spikes, and instead of removing the cup they use their hands to crush the cups!

And a similar one: Tsunderecookies. Twelve cookies, and an entire ten laced with chili powder.

In 1954 R&B singer Johnny Ace shot himself playing Russian Roulette backstage between sets of a Christmas Eve show in Houston. He died in the hospital on Christmas Day.

The reverse of the Russian Roulette is the Josephus Permutation, according to legend, the Jewish historian Josephus found himself with 40 other Jewish rebels at the Seige of Yodfat. Right before their position was about to be overrun by the Romans, they decided to kill themselves via a elaborate suicide pact: everyone stood in a circle, and every third person gets killed (suicide is considered immoral in Judaism). This goes on until everyone's dead. The idea is to position yourself such that you are the last person left.

In the Roman Army, mutinous or cowardly soldiers were rounded up and executed by "decimation", in which every tenth soldier was killed by his comrades, determined by drawing straws. Roman roulette?

A New Zealand pizza chain called Hell's Pizza has "Pizza Roulette". It's a free add-on that laces one slice on your pizza of choice with two drops of "the hottest chili on the planet". Which one? Nobody knows until the poor sap bites into it. Their site even lists a disclaimer when choosing to order it. "It doesn't cost, but someone pays", indeed.

According to Wikipedia, a Finnish magician called Aimo Leikas died doing this in front of a crowd, when a magic trick he'd been practicing all went wrong.

Korean school children occasionally play a game with a local brand of bubblegum. All are lemon flavored, but one pack in each box super sour.

There was a phone app that let you play this game. You could fill up the gun with as many bullets as you want, spin it, and then pass the phone around to see who has the worst luck.

McDonald's workers in Australia have their own version (called Macca's Roulette), played during slow work days. Refill an empty sauce-gun (newly-filled ones take a few clicks before the sauce shoots through) and take turns shooting it at yourself. Whoever gets hit with a stream of sauce to the face first loses. Variations of the game where you can attempt to shoot another player also exist.

The Nerf Maverick, which provides the page image for Nerf on this very wiki, is styled after a revolver and as such allows one to safely play Russian Roulette without all that messy "potentially killing yourself" business. It appears, however, that Hasbro has cottoned on to this, as all revolver-style Nerf blasters made nowadays feature drums that very plainly let one see if the chambers are loaded.

A possibly-apocryphal German example involved sausages. Otto von Bismark once challenged Rudolf Virchow to a duel over a political dispute. Allegedly, Virchow chose sausages as his weapon: One was infected with deadly botulism, one was not. The Chancellor decided that he didn't want to risk eating a toxic sausage and withdrew the challenge.

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